<p><em>The strategy of the businesses is to keep the customer engaged beyond the first transaction, says <strong>Ravi Kumar</strong></em><br><br>The increasing traffic on your way to office every morning is adirect indicator of rising pollution & an indirect indicator of the increasing competition within the automotive industry. There are newer players entering every year and with opening up of global economy new cars continues to emerge in the market every year. Car sales increased by 2 per cent year over year in April this years, lead by 6 per cent hike in European markets. In India, car sales increased by 16 per cent, becoming one the largest automobile market of the world. In 2013 to 2014, Indian Auto Industry produced 21.48 million vehicles. The industry accounts for 22 per cent of Manufacturing GDP of the country.<br><br>Records from Society of Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM) indicated that India is going through a hike in sale of commercial vehicles. In January 2015, there was an increase of 5.3 per cent in commercial vehicle sales. In the same way, car sales grew by 3.14 per cent this year from the previous. All of this is eventually resulting in cutthroat competition in the automotive sector. The margins have dried up and at the same time, the cost of production is going all time high. In these circumstances, for an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) to make business sense with a customer in one transaction is generally not feasible. Thus as an increasing trend the automobile OEMs are now focusing on a long terms relationship with the customer.<br><br>The strategy of the businesses is to keep the customer engaged beyond the first transaction. For instance, companies will have to pitch a customer to select the same car while buying for the second car. To achieve this objective, dealers and car vendors will have to move beyond the traditional methods of customer relationships. As to choose an automobile for self is an important decision that involves considerable capital; people go for advice from friends and family. Social media is one of the most common platforms that people turns into, while looking for opinions and advice. The tables have turned and the OEM’s are now on-toes when it comes to customer relationship.<br><br>Car vendors, to stand ahead in the competition, will have to leverage a 360 view of the customer. This is possible through integration of comprehensive set of customer information in a single window for easy accessibility. A CRM is the only system that can offer this integration. Choosing the correct CRM solution for their enterprise contributes to almost 80 per cent of the success and the balance 20 per cent is the execution of the various modules within the solution.<br><br>The objective of a CRM, in most cases is getting a single view of all customer data, right from the first contact history, vehicle and service history, communication and marketing contact history by dealer or OEM. Managing this massive amount of information and integrating the aspects of 360 view of a customer all in one system, which makes CRM the eventual truth, which is customer facing and supersedes all other internal applications. It becomes the interface between the customer and the organization.Thus,these applications should be with enhanced capability, which has facilitates covering the vast aspects operational possibilities in Automobile OEM landscape.<br><br>Scaling up traditional CRMs is not easy due to their rigid structure. However, the setbacksand complexities of traditional CRMs can be addressed via innovative use of technology platform such as Siebel. Out of many options available in the market, Siebel CRM solution for automotive industry is one of the most comprehensive solutions available until date. Siebel CRMs Improves demand forecasting, planning, logistics management, and inventory management. It reducesquality-related costs due to faster product performance feedback. Improved workflow and escalation of customer grievances for faster resolutionis ensured through Siebel based CRMs. Reportedly; Siebel CRM has resulted in increased revenue growth from both higher vehicle sales and a rise in the company’s after-sales parts business.<br><br>In context of Automobile industry, Siebel undoubtedlyis the most complete customer relationship management (CRM). Right fromfield force automation to socially enabled business intelligence;it offers the broadest and deepest portfolio of CRM solutions. These platforms address all customer touch-points and provide rich functionality to support the specific business needs for organisations of every size. These CRMs enable to deliver a superior customer experience. It is an end-to-end integrated application, which comes with embedded real time business intelligence. This seems to be a fair reason why as high as 9 OEM’s in India are already managing their customer service requirements using Siebel.<br><br>The automobile sector can grow with better use of CRMs connecting with customers. Enabling CRMs with social capability will integrate the business venture customer and help to build a trust factor. Automobiles involvea series of services that are related and, in fact, they start with the buying of the vehicle. Servicing of Cars, repairs, replacing any machinery and other such requirements of buyers can be brought under the ambit of a single service provider through more pervasive use of CRM technologies.<br><br><em>The author is director Customer relationship management (CRM) at Cubastion Consulting</em></p>
